Console timeout

[Terry Thorpe]

From a physical security point of view is there a way to create a timeout on the console login (which I have restricted to root)

[Deepak Extross · Accepted solution]

Terry,
You can set the environment variable TMOUT to the number of seconds of idle time before the session times out.
For example,
export TMOUT=60
will log the user off after a minute of idle time.

[Corthouts Carlo]

Hi,

With Posix-sh you can set the variable 'TMOUT' to have the terminate if a command is not entered within the prescribed number of seconds af issuing the PS1 prompt.

Default value is 0 so it never exits.

[Deepak Extross]

By the way, if you're using c-shell, the csh equivalent of
export TMOUT=60
is
set autologout=1

You can put this in your startup file (.profile or .login), and it will be applicable whether you login at the console or from any other terminal.

[David Burgess]

I assume you are talking about a text based console and that you have created /etc/securetty with an entry that says console.

To log root out after a specific time you can set the TMOUT variable in roots .profile :-

No Shell Timeout
----------------

TMOUT=0
export TMOUT

Shell Timeout After 3 Minutes
-----------------------------

TMOUT=180
export TMOUT

I've used this in CDE where I have done su - from myself to root. root's shell times out and log's me out leaving me back in my previous shell.

Hope this helps,

Dave.